“Securing a newborn with an ankle bracelet and ensuring that all authorised personnel transporting newborns carry tags will enable hospitals to monitor the movement of the babies at all times and put parents at ease, he explains.

“Newborns have been stolen from South African hospitals before. RFID tracking could help in curbing the incidents where newborns are smuggled out of hospitals. “We hope to also offer this product to public hospitals in the future,” says Baetu.”

One would presume then that the case for RFID tagging babies in South Africa must be strong then with high instances of baby snatching. However, if this is the case then these baby stealing cases are not reported.

I found no instance of newborn baby stealing in South Africa in a normal Google search, or news search on the first 10 pages so I then spent some considerable time in Google news archive to find one article from 2008.

Article – Biometrics and RFID tracking in UK Education

Documenting the rise of biometric and RFID technology used in education

Book – Surveillance Schools

With the growth of surveillance technologies globally, Dr Emmeline Taylor focuses on the phenomenon of the Surveillance School and explores the impact that continual monitoring is having upon school children, education and society.

433MHz military capabilities of tracking students

Interview with Katherine Albrecht, technology and privacy in schools

Katherine Albrecht show - July 2013. Katherine and Pippa King discuss the victories in removing or preventing biometric and other tracking systems from being used on our children.